“What did the letter say?”
“Boring stuff. About Lillie’s poor digestion, and about Dorothy’s old dog and about Cousin Ed. Dull, personal things. Why would Adelina write the letter in the first person, and sign Lillie’s name?”
“So Lillie Merzinger’s too sick to answer her mail,” Joe said. “Someone has to answer her letters, or her family would worry.”
“But why doesn’t she tell Lillie’s family she’s too sick to write? Why wouldn’t she type a regular letter on the computer? Print it out with the rest of her letters. Tell them how Lillie’s feeling, that she’s taking her medicine, maybe getting a little better. And if someone’s really sick, wouldn’t she phone the family?”
Dulcie’s eyes narrowed to green slits. “And the other letter, the one she wrote on lined paper-she wrote it in a totally different handwriting. She signed it James. Addressed the envelope from James Luther.”
She snatched at a flitting moth, caught it in curving claws, chomped and swallowed it, then fixed him with a hard green gaze.“And why was her handwriting different for each letter? Why was she forging those letters?”
They both thought it:Because Lillie and James aren’t there anymore.Their thought was as sharp on the wind as if they’d spoken.
Joe slapped at a wasp, turned away and began to wash his back.
Normally he’d be as eager as Dulcie to find out what was going on, but this situation made him edgy. He felt as though very soon they were going to wish they’d kept their noses to themselves. Casa Capri, with its locked doors, gave him the fidgets.
“And what,” Dulcie said, “is Renet’s mysterious presentation tomorrow? Like a speech? Why would Renet give a speech? A speech about what?” She sat up tall on the warm boulder, her eyes narrowed, thinking. She shivered once, then lifted a paw and began to clean her pink pads, licking fast and nervously, tugging fiercely at each claw. Tearing off each old sheath, she angrily released the sharper rapiers beneath. She was wound tight, edgy and irritable.
Joe wanted to say,You thought visiting the old folks would be all kippers and cream,wanted to say,Casa Capri didn’t turn out like you expected.But she glared at him so crossly he shut his mouth.
As he bent to tend to his own claws, suddenly she leaped from the boulder and streaked away across the hills again, all nerves and temper. He stared after her, watched her vanish into the tall grass, watched the heads of grass shake and thrash in a long undulating line as if a whirlwind fled through.
He took his time about following her, lingering to sniff at the sweet dusty smells, at masses of yellow poppies which seemed to have bloomed overnight, at old scents of mouse, at rabbit droppings. She was headed diagonally across the hills moving north, and occasionally he stood on his hind legs, so as not to lose her.
He couldn’t see her cross the crest of the hill but he could see the grass shaking. Beyond them to the north, the hills were black from last fall’s fire but were slowly turning green again, as new spring grass sprang up between the remains of that terrible burn. He could still smell burned wood on the wind, and wet ashes. And against the sky there still stood the skeletons of black, dead trees, and a lone chimney, an abandoned sentinel, though some of the houses had been rebuilt.
Janet Jeannot’s studio had been replaced in a way Janet might not like if she were alive to see it. It was now a second-floor apartment, an inoffensive cedar structure without any of the excitement of an artist’s studio. To the east of Janet’s house, up beyond the highest homes, he could see where the drainage culvert emerged from the hills, the place where he and Dulcie had discovered the final key to Janet’s killer.
Dulcie had disappeared. He leaped to the highest hillock to look for her. Gazing down the rolling hills, he thought how they must have been a century ago, before there were ever houses. A wild land, all open, alive with animals far larger than the creatures he and Dulcie hunted, a land of cougars, of wolves and bear, a land belonging to beasts that would sendFelis domesticusscooting for cover.
And though the wolves and bears were gone, still sometimes the cougars and coyotes came down out of the mountains, driven by thirst or hunger, and by encroaching civilization-where tracts of new houses covered their hunting territories-wild animals moving closer each year to human dwellings. Now sometimes in the small hours, a lone coyote wandered the street of a coastal town, hunting domestic cats and small dogs. And already two humans had died at the claws of attacking cougars. He was gripped with amazement that a shy, totally wild creature would dare enter the world of houses and concrete and fast cars.
But the animals, if they were starving, had little choice. He was no philosopher; the only conclusion he could draw was that if humans kept pushing the animals off the land they needed to survive, then humans had better sharpen their own teeth and claws.
Rearing above the grass, still he did not see Dulcie, saw no thrashing where she sped through, only a faint susurration all across the grass tops where the breeze fingered. He heard no sound above the hush of wind and the churr of the buzzing insects.
But suddenly he knew where she was headed, and a chill of fear touched him.
High above the last houses, an ancient barn stood rotting and half-fallen in, its silvered boards leaning inward, its roof torn open to the sky. Dulcie would be there, he’d bet on it. Hunting the rats that ruled that dim, cavernous ruin.
Someday the remains of the old barn would collapse and rot to nothing, but now it belonged to wharf rats. Having long ago cleaned out the last kernel of grain in the feed bins, they subsisted on roots and on mice and lizards, and on whatever smaller creature ventured into their domain.
Some of the rats had migrated down to the boatyards again, but the biggest and boldest had remained to challenge whatever predator invaded their dark and rotting home. Raccoons did not bring their kits to hunt there. A fox had to be full-grown before it would face those beasts.
A stupid place for Dulcie to go, insane to go alone. Terrified for her, he raced across the hills, hoping he was wrong, but knowing she was there. That rat-infested mass of timbers was exactly the place she would go to work off frustration from their night of confinement. He wished she wasn’t so damned volatile.
Ahead, the old barn towered drunkenly, its timbers balanced precariously against one another. He was on the crest of the hill some ten feet above when he saw Dulcie, crouched in shadow among the fallen walls. She seemed, at first, a part of the shadows. She moved slowly, slinking beneath the timbers, her belly hugging the ground. She was poised to leap, but he could not see her quarry. He watched her swing her head from side to side, sorting out some tiny sound that he could not yet hear.
He sped down soundlessly, but he did not approach close enough to spoil her attack. He waited, ready to leap, every muscle and nerve jacked into high voltage, watching her creep deeper into the blackness.
She froze, remained still, the tip of her tail flicking.
She was gone in a sudden blur, flashing through shadows into the blackness.
Silence. No sound, no movement. He could see nothing within that dark, rotting world. He crept swiftly closer.
A scream jarred him, the enraged scream of a rat. A board fell, thundering. Dulcie yowled. He dived for the blackness, charging in, storming in beneath fallen boards.
She screamed again, then another rat scream. He saw its eyes red in the blackness. The two were thrashing; it was a huge rat, a monster. Joe piled into the thudding squealing flailing bodies, grabbing at rat fur. He found the rat’s face and bit deep. Pain burned him. Dulcie twisted and shook the rat so violently she shook him, too. His ears rang with rat screams and with the thuds of his own body. The three of them slammed into timbers, into the earth. His blood pounded, he felt teeth in his leg.
And then, silence.
His mouth was filled with the bitter taste of rat. The beast lay between them, unmoving, their fangs in it, Dulcie’s in its throat, his seeking its heart, its ribs crushed against his tongue. It was a huge, grizzled beast, its body as long as Dulcie, its coat rough with age, its pointed muzzle knobby with old scars. Its eyes even in death were cold and mean.